


I Must Have Loved You a Lot

by Xerxia



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Missing Scene, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 21:36:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7862002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xerxia/pseuds/Xerxia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some of what happened to Peeta in Mockingjay, during his time held captive by the Capitol, after the Quell.  A missing scene from the book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Must Have Loved You a Lot

**Author's Note:**

> This was my third entry in The Everlark Games on Tumblr. I chose to look at some of what happened to Peeta in Mockingjay, during his time in the Capitol, after the Quell. As such, there are pieces of dialogue lifted verbatim from the book. Obviously, those words do not belong to me and are used here only to provide context and cohesion. This piece contains canonical violence of a graphic nature, including torture, and may be disturbing to some.

 

* * *

 

“I’ll see you at midnight.”

I can still taste her last kiss when I come to, lying flat on my back, in a windowless, doorless room. The ceiling glows a soft, soothing yellow. It’s a room I remember, from the last Games. Or rather, from after. The room where they put me back together and polished me up, made me fit to be seen. On the outside anyway.

There are restraining bands on both arms and around my waist. These, too, I remember. I struggle against them anyway. But of course they’re watching, and immediately something cold snakes through the tubes in my arm. Blackness envelops me.

When I open my eyes again nothing in the room has changed. But inside my head, everything is different. Because when I open my eyes again it’s to the realization that if I’m in this room it means I’ve won the Games. I am the victor. And if I’m the victor, then Katniss is…

This time I pass out without any help from the tubes.

 

* * *

 

I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been in this room. No one has entered, not while I’ve been awake at least, though it seems like they keep me sedated most of the time. My body is fed, healed, and polished, completely against my will. But my spirit is crushed. I failed, utterly and completely. Katniss is gone, my girl on fire, the only girl I’ve ever loved.

Silent tears slip down my face, pooling in my ears. I don’t want to cry in front of them, don’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they’ve destroyed me. But I can’t hold it in. I went into the quell expecting to die, hoping to die really, as long as my death meant she would live. I resigned myself long ago to loving her from afar. But she was my whole world. I can’t go on, knowing she’s gone. I won’t.

But when I fight the restraints this time there’s no cold blackness. I struggle and swear and howl in outrage until I’m completely spent, gasping and shaking. And still nothing happens. Each time I regain a little bit of breath I start again, fighting and screaming until I’ve nothing left.

 

* * *

 

I’m in that gauzy world between sleep and wakefulness, thinking about Katniss. Remembering when she kissed me on the beach. The way she clung to me, her small, strong archer’s fingers digging into my shoulders. The tiny sighs. Everything about those kisses was real, I have no doubt about that. For those few, perfect moments she was mine, completely. There were no Games, no cameras. No Capitol.

Though it’s senseless to indulge in what might have been, I can’t help imagining. Without the Quell, we would have had time to grow together. It’d already started. Before the announcement, she was opening up to me, trusting me. Looking at me differently.

Then the reading of the card destroyed my dreams for the future. But even though I spent months pushing her away, trying to prepare her to win the games again, alone this time, and come home to her family, the connection between us was still there. Simmering.

I tried, with the locket, to make her understand. That her life could be good. With her family, with a future of her own choosing, not a marriage she’d been forced into. But she looked at me with molten eyes and told me she needed me. _Me_.

A delicate click-click-click shatters my reverie. I open my eyes to a familiar face hovering over me. Rasmussen, one of the members of my prep team. His nose, surgically enhanced to look like a bird’s beak, wrinkles as he takes in my appearance. He tsks under his breath. “This just won’t do,” he intones, the blue crest of his hair shaking. “Won’t do at all.”

He toys with a panel, out of my reach. The head of my bed raises, bringing me with it, until I’m sitting mostly upright.

I take a deep breath to begin screaming again, but Rasmussen leans in close, whispering in my ear. “She’s alive.” The words stun me silent. _She_? The only ‘she’ I care about is Katniss. Is it even possible? Could they have let us both live a second time? Seems unlikely, but I release the breath I was holding and watch him warily.

“I need to get you ready, Peeta,” Rasmussen says loudly, and it’s his voice, but with an odd inflection. A strain. “I’m going to undo your restraints. Will you stay calm?” His expression is pleading, and despite the thick makeup that coats his face I can see a line of sweat forming on his lip. There’s a hollowness to his eyes that wasn’t there before too. Tearing my gaze away, I notice two peacekeepers flanking what must be the door. Both heavily armed.

I nod.

My arms are released, but not the thick band around my waist. Rasmussen flits around me silently, trimming my hair, shaping my sideburns and eyebrows, polishing my fingernails until they gleam. I haven’t been here long enough for the stuff they used on my beard to have worn off, so he doesn’t bother shaving me.

Another man appears, as if out of nowhere, ghostlike. He looks like a Capitol rendering of a bookkeeper, dressed in what passes for a sedate suit here. “Mr. Mellark,” he trills, the ‘r’ rolling in his ridiculous accent. I don’t acknowledge him. He’s unperturbed. “Can you tell me what you remember about the end of the Quarter Quell?”

I stare at my lap, pick at the thin sheet covering me. The man exhales loudly. “Mr. Mellark,” he says again. “It would be most beneficial if you would cooperate.” Oh I bet it would, but I’m not interested. I glance up at him, affecting a look of utter boredom. “Let me refresh your memory,” he says.

The room is filled with Katniss’s screams.

I struggle against my restraints, kicking and calling for her in a blind panic. Her raw anguish tears me apart, leaves me unable to think, to do anything but wail. “Stop!” I yell. In my terror, I promise to do anything if they’ll stop hurting her.

The screams drop in volume but don’t stop, and I realize it’s a recording. One of the white walls has come alive; displayed on it larger than life is my Katniss, kneeling in what I immediately recognize is the jungle arena. Her hands are clamped over her ears, her eyes screwed tightly shut. The jabberjays.

I calm, somewhat, at the realization that I’m watching the past. She’s not being tortured, at least not live in front of me.

He forwards the tape to the end of the Games. Things I didn’t see. Johanna turning on Katniss, smashing her skull with the damned coil of wire. Watching Katniss crumple to the jungle floor. Johanna brandishing her knife, slicing deeply into Katniss’s forearm, blood spurting, staining the green jungle in glossy red. I hear a keening wail, and only barely register that it’s me.

I sob, uncaring of what the Capitol fiend thinks. My Katniss, dead on the screen. Rasmussen must have meant someone else was alive. My hopes raised for nothing, she’s dead. She’s dead and I’m not.

There’s running and screaming, I’m dimly aware of it, but I don’t really register anything else that happens onscreen until she opens her eyes. The picture is too dark to see their soft silver glow, but my traitorous heart leaps.

And then she whimpers my name.

 

* * *

 

I’ve been alone with my thoughts for perhaps an hour when the door opens again. Portia appears, flanked by two more peacekeepers. I truly like Portia, she’s never treated me like an exhibit, always been so calm and kind, big-sisterly. But it’s clear the new guards are not for me. They’re keeping an eye on her. My unease increases.

She catches my eyes, and there’s a clear warning. _Stay quiet_. So I do. Evidently she knows about the rebel plot the Capitol man explained to me, after he showed me videos of Katniss, alive. Alive, but obviously disoriented and badly injured, blowing up the arena and being lifted out by hovercraft. Rescued by a hovercraft that didn’t belong to the Capitol.

A rescue that, clearly, was never meant to include me.

 

* * *

 

Polished and coiffed, I’m cooling my heels in a guest room of some sort. Typical of what I’ve seen of the Capitol, it’s opulent and gaudy, a bed big enough for four people, a couch, chairs and desk, and a private bath. But I’m strongly aware that I’m no guest. The doors are bolted and the windows don’t open. It’s posh, but it’s a prison.

Portia didn’t, maybe couldn’t, tell me anything. She merely dressed me in an all-white suit, crisp and stiff, and patted my cheek before leaving. Then I was led here by an entire contingent of silent peacekeepers.

I’ve been alone ever since. I found a deck of cards in the desk drawer, and for awhile I entertained myself building card houses. But it’s been hours, I can’t sit still any longer. So I pace, a caged animal.

When another Capitolite finally enters, it’s to advise me of the message I’m to deliver. Call for a ceasefire. Make the rebels understand: Panem will not survive another war.

If I succeed, they’ll let Katniss live.

 

* * *

 

Caesar settles himself more comfortably in his chair. “So…Peeta. Welcome back.”

I offer him a tentative smile. “I bet you thought you’d done your last interview with me, Caesar.”  
  


“I confess, I did,” says Caesar. “The night before the Quarter Quell…well, who ever thought we’d see you again ?”  
  


“It wasn’t part of my plan, that’s for sure,” I frown.  
  


“I think it was clear to all of us what your plan was. To sacrifice yourself in the arena so that Katniss Everdeen and your child could survive.” My child. I can see in Caesar’s expression that he still believes my earlier lie. Good. That will work in my favour.

“That’s it. Clear and simple.” I keep my eyes down, focus on my breathing. Trace the upholstered pattern on the arm of my chair. “But other people had plans as well.”  
  


“Why don’t you tell us about that last night in the arena?” suggests Caesar. “Help us sort a few things out.”

I nod but take my time speaking, aware of just how cautious I have to be here. “That night… to tell you about that last night… well, first of all, you have to imagine how it felt in the arena. It was like being an insect trapped under a bowl filled with steaming air. And all around you, jungle…green and alive and ticking. That giant clock ticking away your life. Every hour promising some new horror. You have to imagine that in the past two days, sixteen people have died, some of them defending you. At the rate things are going, the last eight will be dead by morning. Save one. The victor. And your plan is that it won’t be you.”

A quick glance at the Capitol cameramen shows my words are having their intended effect. They’re all slack-jawed, rapt in my misery. “Once you’re in the arena,” I continue, in the same low, controlled tone. “The rest of the world becomes very distant. All the people and things you loved or cared about almost cease to exist. The pink sky and the monsters in the jungle and the tributes who want your blood become your final reality, the only one that ever mattered. As bad as it makes you feel, you’re going to have to do some killing, because in the arena, you only get one wish. And it’s very costly.”  
  


“It costs your life,” says Caesar, and I fight the urge to smirk. Reliable Caesar, playing right into my hands. “Oh, no,” I tell him. “It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people? It costs everything you are.”  
  


“Everything you are,” Caesar whispers.

The studio is so quiet you could hear a pin drop. No one has ever talked on television about what it’s really like in the Games, at least not that we’ve ever seen in the districts. But we victors lit a little flame of dissent among the Capitolites with our pre-Quell words. And maybe, just maybe, I can fan that flame now. Give the rebellion a fighting chance.

  
“So you hold on to your wish. And that last night, yes, my wish was to save K-Katniss.” At her name I falter a little. Her safety, her very life, is riding on this. Is riding on me selling her innocence. If the rebels lose, I’m counting on my words protecting her. It’s like walking a tightrope. Fan the dissent. Placate Snow. Keep Katniss safe. The Games aren’t really over.

“But even without knowing about the rebels, it didn’t feel right.” I continue.  “Everything was too complicated. I found myself regretting that I hadn’t run off with her earlier in the day, as she had suggested. But there was no getting out of it at that point.”  
  


“You were too caught up in Beetee’s plan to electrify the salt lake,” says Caesar.  
  


“Too busy playing allies with the others,” I correct. “I should have never let them separate us! That’s when I lost her.” I let them see just a little of my anguish. Just enough to keep them invested in me, and more importantly, in Katniss.

“When you stayed at the lightning tree, and she and Johanna Mason took the coil of wire down to the water,” Caesar prompts.  
  


“I didn’t want to!” Anger coils in my gut, hot and tight. “But I couldn’t argue with Beetee without indicating we were about to break away from the alliance. When that wire was cut, everything just went insane. I can only remember bits and pieces. Trying to find her. Watching Brutus kill Chaff. Killing Brutus myself. I know she was calling my name. Then the lightning bolt hit the tree, and the force field around the arena… blew out.”  
  


“Katniss blew it out, Peeta,” Caesar says and I swallow hard. “You’ve seen the footage.” This is it.

“She didn’t know what she was doing.” I insist, and the distress in my voice is real.  “None of us could follow Beetee’s plan. You can see her trying to figure out what to do with that wire.” I glare at Caesar, and he raises his hands in supplication.

  
"All right. It just looks suspicious,” he says. “As if she was part of the rebels’ plan all along.”  
  


I jump to my feet, grasping the arms of his chair and yelling right into his powdered blue face. “Really? And was it part of her plan for Johanna to nearly kill her? For that electric shock to paralyze her? She didn’t know, Caesar! Neither of us knew anything except that we were trying to keep each other alive!”  
  


Caesar places his hand on my chest, pushing me back. “Okay, Peeta, I believe you.”  
  


“Okay,” I whisper, slumping back into my chair, pulling at my hair. I have to make them understand that we knew nothing, neither of us.

"What about your mentor, Haymitch Abernathy?”

I don’t even try to mask my disgust. “I don’t know what Haymitch knew.”  
  


“Could he have been part of the conspiracy?”

“He never mentioned it.” He never mentioned a lot of things. Always secretive. Never giving us the tools we needed to stay alive, in the Games or in what came after. Never helping us at all.

"What does your heart tell you?”  
  


“That I shouldn’t have trusted him,” I admit. “That’s all.”  
  


Caesar leans in, pats my shoulder. “We can stop now if you want.”  
  


“Was there more to discuss?” I smirk. This is the part where I’m supposed to deliver my Capitol-written message.

“I was going to ask your thoughts on the war, but if you’re too upset…” he trails off.

  
“Oh, I’m not too upset to answer that.” I take a deep breath and look straight into the camera. “I want everyone watching - whether you’re on the Capitol or the rebel side - to stop for just a moment and think about what this war could mean. For human beings. We almost went extinct fighting one another before. Now our numbers are even fewer. Our conditions more tenuous. Is this really what we want to do? Kill ourselves off completely? In the hopes that, what? Some decent species will inherit the smoking remains of the earth?”  
  


“I don’t really… I’m not sure I’m following…” says Caesar.  
  


“We can’t fight one another, Caesar,” I tell him. “There won’t be enough of us left to keep going. If everybody doesn’t lay down their weapons - and I mean, as in very soon - it’s all over, anyway.”  
  


“So…you’re calling for a cease-fire?” Caesar feeds me the words I’m supposed to say.  
  


“Yes. I’m calling for a cease-fire,” I say tiredly. I’ve delivered their message. I have nothing left. “Now why don’t we ask the guards to take me back to my quarters so I can build another hundred card houses?”  
  


Caesar wraps up the show, but I don’t listen, instead tracing the brocade fabric of the couch with my thumbnail and thinking about Katniss. _Was it enough? Did I buy her immunity?_

 

* * *

 

They don’t take me back to that guest room.

 

* * *

 

The red-haired avox girl who served us before both Games attends to my injuries with tears in her eyes. I try to soothe her distress, telling her that with two older brothers I’ve been beaten worse than this before. She cracks a half smile and shakes her head.

Truthfully, my brothers have never inflicted half this much damage. Even my mother, who was always quick with a wooden spoon or belt, never hurt me like this.

But I’m a victor. I’ve endured worse.

I’m well aware that the beatings aren’t actually an attempt to extract information from me, despite the questioning. They know I know nothing except what they feed me. And I know by the careful way their fists and bats avoid my face that they’re not done using me as a mouthpiece. Which can only mean that Katniss is still alive.

The one thing that keeps me going is thinking of Katniss. When the guards toss me into my dank cell after a session, I distract myself from the cracked ribs and bruised lungs by curling up on my bare mattress and dreaming of her. I try to reach out to her with my mind, imagine she’s whispering comfort in my ear. Tending to me as gently as she did in our cave.

 

* * *

 

I don’t know what they’re doing to Johanna. Lavinia doesn’t know either, or so she says. But some days Johanna screams herself hoarse. Some days she cries. Some days there’s only silence. Those are the days I’m most frightened.

I’ve gotten better at reading the words Lavinia spells into my hand, and the little bits of communication have become my lifeline.

My captors have all but stopped feeding me. There’s a pipe in the corner of my cell that leaks, a steady drip-drip-drip that at least provides me drinking water. I hope it’s water. I try not to think too hard about it.

 

* * *

 

I grew up over a bakery. It was always hot from the ovens; winter, spring, summer and fall. Warm, cozy, comforting.

The bakery is gone now, I know that. Destroyed in retribution for blowing out the force field around the arena to end the Quarter Quell. Destroyed for our part in a plot we had no idea about. They showed me tape of my district on fire. Burning. I have no idea whether my family survived.

In the icy blackness of this dungeon, damp and cold and alone, so very alone… I can’t imagine ever being warm again. I can’t imagine ever feeling safe again.

 

* * *

 

Lavinia calls them _strobe lights_. They flash on and off quickly, alternating between darkness so black I can’t see my hand in front of my face, and blinding white light, like staring into the sun. Closing my eyes doesn’t help, I can see them through my eyelids, through my fists. I vomit what little I’ve managed to drink each time they start up again.

In the few stolen moments when they’re not beating me, not flashing the horrid lights. When neither Annie nor Johanna are screaming. In those all too brief moments I try to conjure Katniss in my mind’s eye. Try to remember those silver eyes, the way her nose wrinkles when she scowls. The husky timbre of her voice.

I’m afraid to forget her. She’s all I have left.

 

* * *

 

A man in a white lab coat, I call him Dr. X.,  checks me over periodically, ensures that they haven’t done anything lethal. I’m always disappointed when he finds me ‘ _not mortally wounded’_.

Today, he pronounces me ‘ _fit to perform’_. I’m washed and groomed and dressed again, made presentable. Even given a hot cup of tea. I want so badly to throw it away, to spite them. But it’s the first hot thing I’ve been given in what feels like a year, and when it slides down my throat I can’t find it in me to worry about what they might be drugging me with.

Then I’m dragged back onto a soundstage. Today it’s just me, Caesar Flickerman, a single cameraman and perhaps fifty peacekeepers.

I can barely focus. I know I have to keep it together, or they’ll take out their displeasure on Annie and Johanna again.

Caesar makes small talk and I try to keep up, but my hands shake so badly I’m forced to grip the chair arms. As if he can sense I’m struggling, he cuts right to the important question. “There are rumours,” he says quietly, “That Katniss Everdeen is filming propos to incite the districts.”

“They’re using her, obviously,” I say. “To whip up the rebels. I doubt she even really knows what’s going on in the war. What’s at stake.”

“Is there anything you’d like to tell her?” Caesar prompts.

“There is.” I look directly into the camera, imagine I’m speaking to Katniss. "Don’t be a fool, Katniss. Think for yourself. They’ve turned you into a weapon that could be instrumental in the destruction of humanity. If you’ve got any real influence, use it to put the brakes on this thing. Use it to stop the war before it’s too late.” I take a deep breath and then continue, off script. A plea just to her. “Ask yourself, do you really trust the people you’re working with? Do you really know what’s going on? And if you don't… find out.”  
  


As soon as the light on the camera turns off I reflexively flinch. Caesar is quickly escorted away; his peacekeepers might be more gentle but there’s no doubt he’s a prisoner too.

They don’t even strip away my fancy Capitol clothes this time before the batons and boots beat me back into submission. Before they toss me back in my cell.

 

* * *

 

They drag in new prisoners, and when one of the guards sneeringly calls them ‘ _the redheads’,_ my heart sinks. It can only be Lavinia and Darius. And it can only be my fault. They’re being punished because I couldn’t convince the rebels to agree to a ceasefire. I failed.

 

* * *

 

I’ve completely lost any concept of time. Have I been here weeks? Months? Years? Will I be here forever?

They don’t even pretend to interrogate me now. They kick me or punch me or blare horns in my ears just for the fun of it. They play a game where they hit me in the stomach with a stick, and each time I fall they beat Darius, only stopping when I stagger back to my feet. Then, of course, they turn their attention back to hitting me. And the cycle repeats.

Sometimes they’ll tell me that a beating is punishment for a propo Katniss has filmed for the rebels. Those are the beatings I take with a smile. If she’s making propos then she’s still alive, still safe. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.

I try not to dwell on the fact that Johanna, Annie and I didn’t fit into the rebel plans.

 

* * *

 

Lavinia is dead. They electrocuted her, right in front of me. Killed her for no other reason than she was kind to me. I am poison. Everyone around me gets hurt or killed. Because of me.

I wish I was dead. It would be better for everyone that way. Even Katniss doesn’t need me anymore. If she ever really did.

 

* * *

 

It’s a thumb that lands by my knee this time, adding to the blood spattered everywhere. I can’t even muster up enough energy to cry. They’ve been torturing Darius for hours, interrogating him, asking questions he can’t answer, laughing - laughing! - when he can only howl or grunt gutturally in response.

Cutting off his fingers and toes, one by one. Tossing them at me where I kneel, bound and battered. Broken. Useless.

His eyes, glazed with pain and terror, beg me to intervene. But I can’t. I can’t help him. I couldn’t save Lavinia, I can’t save Johanna or Annie either. No one is ever going to free us. We are all going to die down here.

 

* * *

 

My prep team trembles and shakes as they cover my bruises and cuts as best they can with paint and powder. They’re all completely silent.

They seat me on an elevated chair, in front of an illuminated map of Panem. It flashes with heartbreakingly high numbers. Counts of the victims of what can only be categorized now as a full-out war.

Snow himself makes an appearance; it’s everything I can do not to cower. He looks me up and down, evaluating me with his beady snake eyes. Finding me insufficient. “The rebels are losing, Mr. Mellark,” he intones, boredom in his voice. “Heavy casualties in all of the districts. Your dear Miss Everdeen is leading them all to their death.”

I know that’s not true. Katniss is headstrong, but she would never, ever deliberately put anyone in harm’s way. She must not know what’s happening. She wouldn’t support the decimation of humanity.

For a few minutes they all seem to forget about me, focused on setting the president up at a podium, fussing over his appearance, simpering and pandering. My attention is held by a bank of monitors, scenes of war, devastation, destruction play on a loop. Death everywhere.

A peacekeeper talks in low tones into a strange device. He must not realize that I can hear him. But I can, and as soon as he says _‘District Thirteen_ ’ my heart starts hammering. District Thirteen is where the rebels are based, where they’re apparently keeping my Katniss.

They’re going to destroy Thirteen. Bomb it, tonight.

My mind reels, my heart pounds. It can’t be. I must have misunderstood. They promised! They promised if I cooperated that Katniss would be spared!

But when have they ever kept their word? When have they ever followed through on a promise?

We are victors, Katniss and I, Johanna and Annie too. But are we living the carefree life of a victor, pampered in the lap of luxury? No. Johanna and Annie and I are prisoners, tortured and tormented for Snow’s amusement. And Katniss, my Katniss. They’re going to kill her, in spite of everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve endured.

I try to keep myself under control but I’m so angry. So heartsick and angry I feel like I’m going to explode.

 

* * *

 

Snow is speaking at his podium but I can’t listen. I can only think about Katniss. I have to warn her. Maybe some of the rebel leaders are watching tonight.

But anything I say will be taken out on Annie or Johanna. Or maybe Portia and my prep team, all of whom stand just behind the cameramen, peacekeeper’s guns pressed to their skulls. A reminder to me to stay on script this time.

The cameraman gestures, and I begin to read the lines projected in front of me, frustration clear in my voice. I tell the camera about the deaths, the destruction all across the country. Then the monitor to my left flashes, and no longer is it me I’m seeing.

It’s Katniss.

A cold horror envelops me. She’s standing in a burned-out husk of a building, dressed in black from head to toe. She looks angry. Her lips form my name.

She’s gone as quickly as she appeared. A voice in my earpiece shrieks at me to keep going. And I try, I do. But within moments the monitor has flashed again. This time Finnick Odair appears. I wasn’t sure he had been in on the rebel plans. I guess I have my answer.

It’s pandemonium in the studio. People yell directions left and right, the monitors keep switching between the live feed of me, staring slack-jawed in front of a map, and shots of Katniss. Katniss, fierce with her bow, taking out a hovercraft. Katniss, tending to the injured in what looks like a hospital of sorts.

Katniss, alive and well and clearly working with the rebels.

Katniss, who seems just fine without me.

For a while, the screen displays only the official seal of Panem, as frantic technicians try to figure out what’s happening. Snow barks orders, people scurry around, terror written on their faces. People will die tonight, that much is clear.

Finally, the broadcast resumes. Snow plows forward, saying that the rebels are now attempting to disrupt the dissemination of information they find incriminating, but both truth and justice will reign.

He turns on me, snake eyes flashing, and asks if, given tonight’s demonstration, I have any parting thoughts for Katniss.

I blanch, but a new voice through my headset feeds me scripted words. “Katniss… how do you think this will end?” I whimper. “What will be left? No one is safe. Not in the Capitol. Not in the districts.”  

I have a choice to make. One last chance to maybe protect Katniss. To fulfil my final wish, my only wish. But the price will be steep. Not my own life, that no longer has any value. But the lives of all of the people who have ever helped me in any way. The lives of anyone the Capitol can reach and use against me. Strangers. Children. No one is safe.

No one will ever be safe, as long as Snow is in charge. That much is heartbreakingly clear. “And you…in Thirteen…” I inhale sharply, fighting for air, fighting for courage. “Dead by morning!”  
  


Snow orders, “End it!” I try to continue, to plead with Katniss to get to safety, to save herself and anyone else left. I want to tell her that I love her. That I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. But hands pull me from my chair, throw me to the ground. Boots make contact with my traitorous mouth, silencing me.

  
My blood splatters across the tiles.

 

* * *

 

I wake up with my head throbbing and the all too familiar metallic tang of blood on my tongue. But I’m not in my cell. Instead, I’m in an overly bright laboratory. Dr. X. is staring at me with barely veiled disgust.

“Such a huge fuss, Mr Mellark,” he says. “And all for a girl who doesn’t even care about you.” I know he’s probably right, but it doesn’t matter. I did what I needed to do, and I’d do it again and again and again.

“Maybe not,” I rasp, drawing on the last of my defiance. “But I love her, and you can’t take that away from me.”

He merely smiles, and reaches into the pocket of his lab coat, pulling out a syringe.

 


End file.
